Nimitz Class (9 page)

Eight men were catapulted overboard when the wave struck. Three of them were hammered into the bulkhead and were unconscious when they hit the water. These men would never regain consciousness, despite swift and heroic rescue attempts by the crew.

The engine room was a catastrophe. Chief Petty Officer Jed Mangone suffered terrible facial burns in a flash from an electrical breaker, and two young engineers were crushed by a huge generator they had been repairing. Neither of them would ever walk again. Up on the bridge the scene was almost identical to that on the
Port Royal
. Flying glass from the blown windows had reduced the area to a war zone, a grotesque scarlet and crystal nightmare, in which no one had escaped injury.

Captain Bill Simmonds, who would later need sixty-three stitches in his face, took over the blood-soaked helm himself, ordered his ship to battle stations, cursed the communications failure, and roared at the top of his lungs for someone to access the Flag.

Twenty-four miles northeast of the carrier, the USS
Arkansas
was changing course, closing to her former position in the inner zone, as decreed by the admiral’s policy of frequently altering the disposition of his group to hide the carrier on any foreign radar screens.

“Captain…Conn. Just saw a
weird
flash in the murk to the south. Coulda been lightning, but it don’t seem right somehow.”

“Captain, aye. Coming to the bridge.”

“Conn…CIC. Sonar reports massive underwater explosion. Bearing two-four-five…”

“Captain, sir, sonar reported massive underwater explosion…two-four-five…I’m turning toward.”

“Got that. What’s going on?” But even as he spoke, a thunderous explosion split the night, and a blast wave of solid air crashed through the bridge windows.

The rest was lost in the roar of the wind and the unexpected chaos on the bridge, as the Watch Officer tried to restore order in the dangerous shambles of broken glass and wounded sailors.

And now behind the first blast, another wind was rising, a grotesque unnatural wind, warm and vicious, like the height of a typhoon, sweeping across the ocean, blasting now across the upper works and radar installations of the big Aegis missile cruiser, slowing the eleven-thousand-ton bulk of the warship in her tracks.

“
Jesus!
What’s going on out here? Is this an earthquake?”

“Captain, sir. That was one hell of a blast—Jeez! You feel the ship stagger? And why has the wind backed a whole twenty degrees? Even the sea feels strange, rolling in from the wrong angle.”

“Beats the hell out of me…but it has to be one hell of a disturbance. I think we will…wait a minute…” To himself, “Take no chances, Art.” Then “
Okay
…Go to General Quarters, Officer of the Deck.”

The captain stayed on the bridge, but down in the sonar room
they were replaying their record of the apparent subsurface eruption which had occurred several miles away just moments before. At least they did not hear the dreaded noise of tinkling glass that always echoes and echoes, back through the underwater, and then through the mind, when a big ship goes down. Instead there was just a strange continued rumbling, slowly dying away to eerie silence. No one had any answers. None whatsoever.

Whatever had caused the violently freakish conditions had also caused a certain amount of chaos in the operations center of the USS
Arkansas
. Communications were down everywhere. The big round radar screen that showed the surface picture of the Battle Group was out altogether, and the Air Warfare Officer was trying to coax it into life. It seemed darker than usual because so many screens were blank.

Captain Barry headed for his high chair and hit the UHF radio phone on the inter-ship network, direct to the carrier’s Combat Information Center. The line was a dead end. No one in the command ship replied. But he heard an erratic transmission voice from one of the outlying frigates, almost seventy miles away to the south, apparently calling the carrier. “
Jefferson
…this is
Kauffman
…Radio check…Over.” But faraway
Kauffman
was getting no answer either. Art Barry tried the encrypted line to the admiral’s ops room. No reply.

Then he tried the direct line to his baseball pal, Jack Baldridge. There was total silence on his phone too. Captain Barry asked Comms for a satellite link to the carrier…“Sir, we’re having a real problem with satcom…aerial stabilization, intermittent malfunction. Been trying for several minutes…achieved occasional access to the satellite, but there’s no contact from
Jefferson
. As far as I can tell all normal comms with the Flag have died on us.”

“Someone try to raise the CIC in the
O’Kane
. She’s operating close in today, a couple of miles off the carrier’s port bow. They’ll know more than we do….”

“No communication there either, sir, we were just trying.”

“Okay, try
Hayler
, she was about twenty miles out when we lost the surface picture. Get their captain…yes, regular UHF.”

“
They’re on, sir!
Commander Freeburg, encrypted.”

“Hey, Chuck…Art Barry. Can you tell me what the hell’s going on around here…we can’t raise the carrier, most of my comms are down, and we couldn’t raise
O’Kane
either…neither could you…? Jesus…! Who?…You got one of the SSN’s in comms? It was a big bang all right…God knows…! You’re heading in to meet the carrier? No…don’t do that. Hold station on formation course and speed. I am approaching
Jefferson
’s last known to investigate…Meantime, I’ve gone to GQ and I’m gonna turn on my radiation monitors…you better do the same. There’s something weird goin’ on here…I will keep you informed.”

“Captain, sir, look out. The biggest wave I’ve ever seen is coming…!”

As the Watch Officer shouted, almost in slow motion, a sixty-foot-high wall of ocean seemed to rise up from nowhere. It hit the
Arkansas
head-on, breaking right across the fo’c’sle, and up over the superstructure—thousands of tons of green water crashing across the guns and missile launchers, submerging the entire ship it seemed, and roaring through the broken bridge windows.

But like all modern warships, she righted herself swiftly, seeming to shake the ocean from her decks, and shouldered her way forward with seawater still cascading down the hull. The Officer of the Watch could see the colossal wave rolling on, like that strange wind, toward the northwest and the shores of Arabia.

The next wave was not quite so big, but it swamped the ship again, and the one after that did the same. Slowly the waves diminished, and as the seas returned to the normal swell, the Officer of the Watch set about checking that no one had been swept or blown overboard.

Twenty-six minutes had now passed since the weird flash in the southern sky had barely been sufficient for the Officer of the Deck to bother his captain. But now only four of the possible ten other Battle Group surface warships were coming up in comms with
Arkansas
. Art Barry found himself apparently in charge of the group until the carrier came back on line. He established that both guided missile frigates, the four-thousand-tonners
Ingraham
and
Kauffman
, appeared intact, as
did the four-thousand-ton Spruance Class DDG
Fife
. The other Spruance,
Hayler
, appeared in similar shape to the
Arkansas
, wind-and sea-swept, but almost back to full working order.

Both SSN’s,
Batfish
and
L. Mendel Rivers
, reported themselves unharmed at periscope depth. Both submarine captains gave their intentions, to remain on original station fifty miles out from the carrier, west and east respectively, on formation course and speed, maintaining constant comms. “Outfield beautiful,” muttered Barry. “Where the fuck’s the pitcher?”

Everyone in comms was now reporting the same violent underwater upheaval.
Ingraham
and
Kauffman
were first hit by a smaller forty-foot wave. Both of them were fifty miles out from ZULU ZULU (the Group Center) at the time.
Hayler
and
Fife
, however, had been about twenty-five miles out, and like
Arkansas
, had taken a sixty-foot wave. Unlike
Arkansas, Ingraham
had taken it right on the beam and very nearly capsized.

Of the missing six ships, not yet in comms, there appeared to be only five surface radar contacts close to ZULU ZULU. These were all stationary, or nearly so. By 2145
Arkansas
’s surface picture was back in business, which partly clarified the situation for Captain Barry.

He could now see twelve other contacts from his ink picture, including himself. There were two SSN’s and five surface warships in good to reasonable shape, five others were floating, but unidentified, and still making way to the southwest, but out of comms.

One was missing.

At 2150, the ship’s broadcast of the
Arkansas
blared: “Radiation alarm! Radiation alarm! Clear the upper deck. Assume condition 1A. Activate pre-wetting. Decontamination parties close-up.” This official imperative ended with the traditional U.S. Navy roar of no-questions-asked, do-it-now urgency…
“No shit!”

Within seconds all ventilation fans were crash-stopped. It took ten more minutes to get the ship properly isolated from the outside air, from the radioactive particles, which had set off the monitors. She was now like a huge, sealed cookie tin.

Every hatch, every flap, every external bulkhead door, every opening to the outside air was clipped hard home. Only then was it safe to bring in the gas-tight “citadel” ventilation to provide fresh air via special filters which would sift out all the radioactive particles. The system raised the pressure inside the citadel to slightly above atmospheric, and thus prevented any inward leakage of the lethal radioactive outside air. All drafts were headed OUT.

Radar picture from the
Thomas Jefferson
showing its position within the Carrier Battle Group, July 8, 2002

As the ship swung away across the monsoon wind, and cleared the radioactive plume to the north, the upper-deck working parties began to power hose the decks with saltwater and bleach, standard procedure for clearing radioactive particles from every area in the path of a nuclear explosion. Monitoring parties accompanied the hose crews, checking every corner.

By 2155, Captain Barry was ready to take a break. He needed thinking space to assess what had happened. There had plainly been a nuclear detonation, and he desperately needed to find out which ship was missing. Six would not, or could not, answer, and only five were on his radar.

For a couple of minutes he stared at the screen,
willing
it to produce the sixth contact at the center of the group. But his space-age electronics were unable to tell him what he needed to know: who was missing?

He knew he would have to go back to basics, to what sailors call the “Mark I Eyeball.” He ordered a course change: “Conn…Captain…come left, two-three-five…flank speed…I am closing to make visual contact on the most northeast contact of the group ahead…that is track 6031…he may have no lights burning…check visual signaling lamps.”

By 2309, Captain Barry had seen what he needed to see with his own eyes, searching the dim, shadowy seas, probing the darkness to come alongside each of the four ships that showed up on his radar.

He was able to identify the huge 49,000-ton full-load fleet oiler
Arctic
, minor casualties only, radar and comms out, but 70 percent operational. He found the formidable 9,000-ton Ticonderoga Class guided-missile cruiser
Port Royal
, with ten dead, twenty injured, severe aerial damage, major structural damage in the stern area,
including her harpoon battery and one helo, severe flooding in the hangar area.

He also found her sister ship, USS
Vicksburg
, which had taken the big wave fine on her starboard bow, no serious casualties, severe aerial damage, no significant structural damage. The
O’Kane
, as she lay stopped and listing in the water, was a floating wreck, in desperate need of aid. And he found the Spruance Class DD, sister ship to
Hayler
, the
O’Bannon
, many casualties, number not yet known, ship nearly capsized in the tidal wave, able to make way through the water but little else, severe damage topside and internal.

Captain Barry stared at his screen again, in shock, at the space where the carrier must have been. The radar made its familiar, emotionless, circular sweep. And still there was nothing where once the mighty warship had been. No one could see her. No one could speak to her. And no one could hear her. The
Thomas Jefferson
was gone.

As the senior officer in charge of the second most important warship in the Group, Captain Barry now ordered his communications office to access the satellite’s direct line to the U.S. Navy headquarters in Pearl Harbor, to Admiral Gene Sadowski, Commander-in-Chief, Pacific Command (CINCPAC).